Booklist

David’s Books of the Year 2022

Selected by David Lea


I’ve been reading a lot of crime fiction this year; Javier Cercas’s first foray into the genre is a masterpiece, the first in a sequence, and Michael Horowitz’s continuation of his tongue-in-cheek autobiographical sequence is a delight. But for me, the Book of the Year was Roger Morgan-Grenville’s Shearwater, a passionate love letter to one of the world’s most extraordinary birds.

From the publisher:
'Shearwater is sheer delight, a luminous portrait of a magical seabird which spans the watery globe' Daily Mail.'Charming and impassioned ... a rich tribute to an extraordinary bird.' Horatio Clare, author of A Single Swallow and Heavy…

From the publisher:
'A latter-day Bulgakov . . . A Ukrainian Murakami.' - Phoebe Taplin, Guardian'A post-Soviet Kafka.' - Colin Freeman, Daily TelegraphThis journal of the invasion, a collection of Andrey Kurkov's writings and broadcasts from Kyiv,…

From the publisher:
"Lovely, hilarious, and seriously thought-provoking." TONI MORRISON SLEEPING AMONG SHEEP UNDER A STARRY SKY is a collection of essays written over the course of the last thirty-five years. Shawn seems to start from the premise that the…

From the publisher:
'EASILY THE GREATEST OF OUR CRIME WRITERS' Sunday TimesPRAISE FOR HOROWITZ . . .'Just masterful stuff' RICHARD OSMAN'Fiendishly clever and hugely entertaining' LUCY FOLEY'Sheer genius' INDEPENDENT'Dazzling…

From the publisher:
'Never before, in years of reviewing books about buildings, has one brought me to tears. This one did.' Rowan Moore, Observer Book of the Week…

From the publisher:
Without planning it, I wrote a diary of sorts. Lightly. A diary of fiction. Or is that not what this is?Essayistic inquiries come together into a sustained meditation on writers and their works, on the spaces of reading and writing fiction,…

From the publisher:
"A gem of a book, easily the best I've read this year. A contemporary police procedural with a literary edge. I was rooting for the flawed, but deeply compassionate Melchor Marin from the first page to the last. Highly recommended" M W…

From the publisher:
The Sunday Times Science Book of the Year‘If anyone was born to save Britain’s rainforests, it was Guy Shrubsole’ Sunday TimesFrom the bestselling author of Who Owns England?, a mesmerising chronicle of…

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